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Ellen DeGeneres' "Walter Mitty" Screener Leaks Online

It’s Oscar piracy season, that time of the year where screeners of newly-released critical darlings are leaked online as DVD and Blu-Ray screeners are sent out around the world to Academy voters and secretly loaned to their friends and relatives.

Today, I got a tip that there was a very unusual watermark in the screener of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty that leaked online today. I dug it up, and sure enough, a very familiar name pops up in the first scene of the screener. I made a GIF of it:

Oh, Ellen! If the watermark’s accurate, this screener belonged to Ellen DeGeneres. But was it actually an Oscar screener? Probably not.

The watermark shows that the screener was created on November 26, 2013. According to Ken Rudolph’s Academy screener list, he received the Walter Mitty DVD screener via UPS on December 19.

That’s a pretty huge gap, indicating that Ellen’s screener wasn’t for Oscar consideration, but instead given to her for review in advance of Ben Stiller’s December 4 appearance on her show.

Of course, there’s a chance, albeit small, that this watermark was added by someone besides 20th Century Fox — by someone trying to hide the identity of the actual source, maybe.

More likely, the watermark is accurate and Ellen’s screener simply ended up in the wrong hands. A postal worker, one of her employees, friend, family member, or countless others in the production and distribution chain could be responsible for ripping the DVD and putting it online.

It’s very common for screeners to leak, but rare for a celebrity’s name to be identified as the source. In 2011, a screener copy of Super 8 leaked online with Howard Stern’s name clearly watermarked on it. Stern vehemently denied leaking the film on air.

I update the spreadsheet on the day the nominations were announced, which was January 10 of last year. I’ll update the older screeners that leaked after that when the new nominations are announced on January 16.

Nebraska went out to as many people as Gravity yet only leaked yesterday, Philomena is yet to surface. Last year The Master never leaked so I now find what isn’t leaked a more interesting story than what is